I love football

I love football. Covering football, specifically the Texans, for the Houston Chronicle is one of the things that I have been so fortunate to do. I can’t wait for the games to begin.

But, first there is a little thing called Training Camp. This season, I will be covering my fifth Texans training camp for the Chronicle. It will be my seventh time working at a training camp in my career. I worked as a training camp intern for a Denver TV station in 1985 and then in 1986 for the Denver Broncos PR staff during the team’s training camp in Greeley, Colo.

As the first week of Texans’ training camp comes to a close, the challenges of covering days and days of football practice remain the same each year. How do you make practice images interesting? The first day is usually easy. It’s hot. Get players cooling off. There’s excitement about the new year starting. The fans are out in full force. Get some crazy fans. Texans fans are great fun. There are new players. Get the new players. The team’s stars are back. Get the stars. But after that, then what do you do in the weeks to come?

One of the most challenging things about covering an NFL training camp is that there is very little hitting during practice. Some sections of practice are closed to photography as well. Dramatic football photos are hard to come by at practice. I can remember some of the those Broncos camps during the 1980s where they ran the Oklahoma drill at least once during camp. This is a drill where a pair of linemen battle it out and a running back tries to get by. There were always some great hits during that drill. Tempers usually ran pretty high as well. In the NFL of the 21st century, real hitting only happens during games. Finding good football photos during practice is rare.

This is my challenge each season. I go into each practice with the mindset of going after the images as hard as these guys are playing on the field. After all, it’s pre-season for me as well. After getting the bread and butter images to accompany the stories, I try to look for interesting angles, reflections and action. Anything that will make my report from camp better for our readers. I want to make those images that fans enjoy and want to come back for more.

The next couple weeks should be quite fun. Next week, the Texans will start gearing up for their first pre-season game at Arizona, and then they travel to New Orleans for three practices with the defending Super Bowl Champion Saints, before their second pre-season game in the Superdome. Last season when the Saints practiced here, emotions and hitting ran high. I’m looking forward to seeing that in New Orleans.

Brett Coomer : Chronicle

Texans defensive lineman DelJuan Robinson sprays water on his face to cool off on the opening day of training camp.

5 Responses

Unrelated to your piece here, I have a photography ethics question: While shooting baseball recently, I got an image that be 1000% more compelling with a shallower DoF. If this shot is for intended for editorial purposes would it be wrong for me to add some gaussian blur to the background in order to keep attention on the subject of the shot?

What is the right thing to do here? I don’t want to go down the path to the Dark (Poorly-exposed) Side.

As to your ethics question. It would be absolutely wrong to add the blur to your edges. When you do this, you are adding something that was not there when you shot it.

As a photojournalist, you have to have credibility. You have to present your images as the truth. Our business has taken too many hits in the past few years manipulating the truth with photo editing software. Just because we can, does not mean that we should. Photo editing software is a great tool that we rely on every day. These programs can save your images as far as exposure, color balance and a few other things. But if you are adding things (or taking away for that matter) that aren’t there, don’t do it.

If your image was shot with too much depth of field, learn from this and move on. The good thing now is that we don’t have to burn expensive film to work on our shooting skills. If the picture stinks, oh well. It just goes away with a push of a button.

One little thing that you can do to is burn down your edges a little. That is an old-school darkroom technique we used back in the day. Just remember not to go too far.